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So You Want to Make Your Own Book Covers – The Nitty Gritty Part 1

I promised I’d be back with some more useful hands on tips for creating your own book covers; here you were, doubting me, weren’t you. The following post will likely be broken into two pars and feature some NSFW bits.

Currently I’ve been working with my graphic designer to redesign my book cover, trying to more accurately capture the feel of of the book, both in genre and in content. Along the way I came up with the brilliant idea to try my hand at some fantasy photo-manipulation and without the guidance of my sainted graphic artist, set out to try my hand at some.

Fantasy Photo-Manipulation

At first glance, photo-manipulation is scarier than it is in practice. You too can create epic scenes and fantastic vistas with a little skill at the image editing software of your choice, a slew of awesome stock art to choose from and a little time and effort. Still not convinced? Well I created the image at the bottom of the post (hidden behind another more tag, to protect the innocent since it features incredibly mild artistic nudity) in less than one day with absolutely no experience in this kind of photo-manipulation whatsoever! To create something similar you’ll need only 3 things (besides Photoshop or a comparable image editing software).

Tutorial

To create the image below quickly and with a relatively guaranteed chance of success I started out with a tutorial from My Ink Blog. I’ve used tutorials from them in the past and had success creating just the right look for the cover of “Family Picnic” so I highly recommend them for Photoshop based tutorials. Though the fantasy photo-manipulation tutorial wasn’t as easy to follow along with, it’s still a great place to start. No need to take my word for it though, you can always just Google fantasy photo-manipulation and find a tutorial you’re more comfortable with.

Next post: Where to find great stock images and what the rules are on using them as well as what I’ve come up with recently.